Bread and Puppet gives 'Star' performance

Thursday

STAR ISLAND — Dancing toilets. Ukulele-playing angels. Disunited Harmonists. Tigers and rhinos and walking trees. And a healthy dose of political commentary, often wrapped around the form of comedy.

That was the mood set when the Bread and Puppet Theater circus journeyed from Vermont to Star Island at the Isles of Shoals this week to perform before an audience of conference goers and day trippers alike on a beautiful early summer afternoon.

Bread and Puppet, now more than 50 years old, combines outsized masks and sculptures and vibrantly colorful costumes, with politically progressive skits coming right out of today’s news. While they’re often played for laughs, the underlying, serious message was easy to discern.

The skits are written fresh every July, said troupe member Esteli Kitchen. This particular circus performance was among the last for the 2016 season. As it was written before the fall election, the first skit shows troupe members on stilts holding colorful red arrows pointing in every direction. Their name? The “Whatforward Circus.”

The performance was peppered with skits that included a nerdy looking man telling everyone from Genghis Khan to a dinosaur to the planet Pluto that their plans to assume power wouldn’t work. The response? “You’re fired!”

There were also poignant moments. In the final skit of the performance, gray textured panels became a roiling sea, and upon it was a boat filled with people. As a storm comes in and the wave action increases, the boat upends and sinks. A sign appears, that read, “In 2017, more than 1,800 migrants died trying to cross the Mediterranean.”

The troupe added a few climate change skits specifically for the Star Island performance, as they had been invited to the island by a conference group that this year focused on the climate movement. One particularly pointed skit involved Mother Earth prevailing over the “fossil fuel tycoons and their cronies, the federal government.”

It was precisely that edge combined with humor that drew Jim Locke to invite the troupe to the island. Locke is one of the chairs for the Natural History conference, and worked throughout the winter to arrange the trip. A long-time devotee, he said he’s seen Bread and Puppet perform many times over the years.

“They’ve always been advocates of social justice and climate justice. They espouse all the things we as people who cherish the earth stand for,” he said of the theater that has its roots in the Vietnam protests of the 1960s. “They were also the first ones to create the oversized puppet heads, and there’s a sculptural quality about the puppets that is wonderful. I have great respect for them.”

He said he wanted to do “something spectacular” for this year’s conference. Still, it was a bit of a challenge, he said, to bring the 17 performers and all of their masks and props to the island. He wrote a number of grants, as did Star Island Corporation, which shared the cost.

Those contributing funds included the Fuller Foundation, Unitarian Universalist Association, Isles of Shoals Association and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Concord, New Hampshire.

The troupe was on the island all week, at first preparing for Wednesday’s performance but also involving conferees in workshops.

Among those who made a day trip to see the performance was Kalika Bower of Lee, who said she appreciated comedic mechanism to underscore the serious message. “Humor is one way to deal with the darkness of life.”

Deirdre Randall of South Berwick, Maine, attended with her young children. She said has seen performances over the years and felt it was important to share that experience with her family.

“It’s funny how they put politics in it,” said her young son, Ethan Carr. “But it had some very powerful messages.”

“I feel like I’ve had a good meal,” said Randall. “It fills you up.”

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